We had the opportunity to attend the state caucus on super Tuesday, and saw our governmental process at work.
As one who enjoys a taste of sausage once in a while at Arthur Bryant's, Haywards and on my pizza, I'm told I would not want to witness sausage being made. As one who enjoys freedom and democracy and America, I think the same applies to witnessing the political process. It was ugly, disorganized and time consuming.
I figured it would be a win-win situation, because the two candidates were Clinton and Obama, and I have no problem with either. Unfortunately, at the caucus location where we were to vote, they were expecting thirty people. They assigned us by a consecutive number system and I was number 743, and one of the very last to pass through the verification process, so there were about 750 of us there, or twenty times what they expected. Because of that, one would have to expect that there would be some built-in chaos.
I was one of the last to be certified, even though we were there early. They divided us into four groups by alphabetical order of the first letter of our last name. Mine was the smallest group, so they processed everyone else first and held my group until last. I stood for over an hour on a long stairway, waiting, so I wasn't in the best of moods. When it came time to certify me, they couldn't find my name on the rolls, so I had to re-register. Since I am already a registered voter, and have been for almost forty years, now I am registered twice.
I was not the last person in line in my group, but because I had to do all of the re-registering crap, almost everyone in my group passed me up, leaving me to be almost the last person to be certified.
A brief aside: The people who were running the show divided us up into groups by alphabet, as I said earlier. As such, each group had a limited number of last initials. The people who were hearding us around would come up to our group and ask if there were anyone with initials that were not in our group.
The lady would ask, "Are there any 'Ts?' Anyone with the last initial 'T?'"
No, there were not.
Later she would come by and ask for any 'A' or 'B.'
There weren't.
Finally, I started catching her attention and pointing here the right direction. After a number of times of my pointing her to the correct letters, she started looking at me like I was some kind of genius. I can imagine that later, so went home and told someone about it.
"There was some guy there who knew everybody's name in the entire place. That guy must have been connected, but I didn't recognize him. Maybe he was just one on those savants."
Anyway, back to the subject.
When, at long last, it was time to stand up and be counted, they asked us all to sit down in the area where all the supporters of our candidate were, and not move around, so we would not be mis-counted, or duplicate counted, or missed entirely. After they came along and counted us, they gave a preliminary count. Then they asked for the undecideds to choose a candidate. I guess there were some people there who thought if they could remain uncommitted, they would be able to parlay their vote into some kind of power brokerage mechanism. Anyway, they did the recount and they announced the results and told us we could all go home.
Of the 750 or so votes cast, Obama got 710 of them and Clinton got 161. Sometimes the alphabet and math can be very difficult. Perhaps if we could alphabetize and add and subtract, we could elect competent leaders. Perhaps that is too much to hope for. Until then, I'll continue to vote and hope for the best. And, I'll probably continue to eat sausage.
At least, that's the view from Jimbo's world.
